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Why TUIs are back

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Re: Why TUIs are back

#431

Post by gschizas »

lucumo wrote: post #335
heavyset_go wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the case. The advent of libraries like Rich and others certainly helped, along with the trend of Rust TUIs for system programming/lack of good GUI options.

Better terminal emulators probably played a role too. In particular the newish Windows Terminal. The older cmd.exe console only supported Windows Console API. WinTerm has full VT and ANSI support, much better font rendering, and less importantly, mouse support and Sixel support. This makes it much easier to build cross-platform TUIs. It used to be a chore, now it's probably easier than most GUI frameworks. (Possibly…

> The older cmd.exe console

You are confusing cmd.exe with conhost.exe

The console is conhost.exe. Conhost (Console Host) is the same kind of program as Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Konsole, Ghostty or Linux Console (the console that Linux uses on text mode)

The shell is cmd.exe (Command Prompt). This is the same kind of program as PowerShell (powershell.exe or the cross platform pwsh.exe), bash, zsh, fish etc. It's also similar to any TUI program such as Far Manager, mc (Midnight Commander), lazygit etc.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#432

Post by pbgcp2026 »

orbital-decay wrote: post #203
agumonkey wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude code amplified the trend hundred fold but there was already a significant increase of TUI since the days of go fzf, rust ratatui and python rich. My bet would be a desire to do away with heavy browser based UI and the curiosity of trying to test the limits of terminal based rendering.

TUI is popular because a) there are no native GUI frameworks for simple tools that are easy, fast, and simple to develop in at the same time, and b) low fidelity lets you pretend being a UI/UX developer without really being one. The rest is abysmal. It's not automatable at all (the article is wrong on that point), less readable (monospace/no images), very limited (try making a DAW in it...), relies on a ton of ancien…

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Re: Why TUIs are back

#433

Post by smcleod »

qudat wrote: post #62

I think if you look purely at the numbers, the real reason TUIs are popular is claude code, everything else is background noise compared to it. What originally got me excited to build TUIs was the concept of delivering apps over the wire via SSH. SSH apps resemble a browser in that way: no local installs required. It's a major reason why I enjoy hacking on https://pico.sh -- deploying the TUI requires zero user invol…

TUIs reclaimed popularity long before Claude Code existed. Just look at the Charm ecosystem https://charm.land

Re: Why TUIs are back

#434

Post by brabel »

antiframe wrote: post #414
brabel wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Code tab in the Claude Desktop App and find that a superior experience since everything you expect from a desktop app works: copy/paste, undo/redo, automatic formatting of text as you type it, multiline input etc which just doesn’t in the TUI. It requires preparing th environment a little bit so that when Claude runs commands it has the same access as a terminal but I got it working easily enough.

All of those: copy/paste, undo/redo, multiline input work for me in my TUI. I wonder if different environments have different behaviors. (Not sure about automatic formatting of text. I usually format my text manually.)

It works differently and in a much more limited manner. Can you select text in the middle of a prompt and delete it? Can you paste anywhere? How do you enter multiline input?? That cannot work unless explicitly handled by the app, terminals don’t have a general way to do it in a TUI. The formatting I am talking about is color highlighting and block code snippets. If you have a terminal that can do that do let me know!!

Re: Why TUIs are back

#435

Post by agumonkey »

paradox460 wrote: post #330
orbital-decay wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TUI is popular because a) there are no native GUI frameworks for simple tools that are easy, fast, and simple to develop in at the same time, and b) low fidelity lets you pretend being a UI/UX developer without really being one. The rest is abysmal. It's not automatable at all (the article is wrong on that point), less readable (monospace/no images), very limited (try making a DAW in it...), relies on a ton of ancien…

>try making a DAW in it The very early DAWs kind of had TUIs, to be fair. Things like the Fairlight CMI https://adamstrange.itch.io/qasarbeach

I think he probably wouldn't classify CMI UI as TUI. It was monochrome and without true type fonts like terminals, but it allowed for pixel drawing it seems. It's a hybrid.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#436

Post by Timwi »

The article spends a lot of time talking about how UIs “look” and how they all “look different”. That's not the important aspect to me.

For me what makes a software usable in the long run (after initial learn) is shortcuts and keyboard navigability. Old GUI frameworks had built-in features for this (app-wide shortcuts, underlined letters, etc.). The web has haphazardly copied one of them (“accesskey” attribute), but now this has been completely forgotten. None of the major websites have accesskeys, even for the most frequently used element like the search bar. There are no shortcuts for frequently used functions such as “like”, “reply”, what have you. It's like developers have universally forgotten that the keyboard exists and what it can do.

TUIs don't solve that.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#437

Post by ShyCodeGardener »

jolmg wrote: post #232
mr_mitm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, remapping escape to caps lock can lead to serious friction if you have to work with different laptops a lot, like I do. The muscle memory gets in the way a lot.

Ctrl-C also works.

Works most of the time, the rest of the time you can just use `Ctrl-[`
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